Gambling addiction: Surrender control over your addiction to gain control over your life
‘Annika, I have tried everything at this point. Perhaps I am just one of those people for whom treatment does not work. I know I am not like some of those other addicted gamblers that I see in Gamblers Anonymous because I can go for weeks without placing a bet…..and if I find a way to only hang on to the winnings, I think there is a good chance I would be able to win back some of what I lost…
They told me at GA I need to accept that I am powerless over my addiction. The idea of powerlessness does not sit well with me. If I am powerless how am I going to put up a fight against all this? Besides, I think it would be harder if I told myself I needed to stop altogether. It feels more manageable as long as I know I can have small bets here and there…..
When denial does the talking…
Chrissy stopped talking and gave me a glance that indicated she was hungry for some approval of her plan. I had met with her on 4 occasions and up until this point, the majority of our time together had been spent trying to break through her denial and sneak in snippets of info that I was hoping would get her to realise how addiction works.
We were using exercises to increase self-awareness and shed some light on some of her inner conflicts. I was also trying to make her realise that she was dismissing the relevance and degree of damage that gambling is causing in her life.
In her mind, she did have a bit of a gambling addiction. But her gambling addiction was ‘different’. She was not so addicted that she needed help stopping or anything like that. In fact, she had only really come to see me to make her life more fulfilling. And of course, because her husband and adult kids had recommended it to her. Aside from that, she could not see much point in our sessions. As always, I had given her some instructions on how to put an end to the gambling. Most of which had been met by dismissal and written off as ‘not needed’.
As I frequently do when I encounter those in deep denial, I ‘sell’ the interventions as something they could try out as there is ‘not much to lose’ by using them. The very fact that someone would feel the need to refuse to use them is in its own right extremely indicative of having something to defend. That something is usually the addiction.
If there was not a compulsive drive to persevere with gambling, why would a person feel so adamantly against trying out a few simple practical steps?
‘Chrissy’s’ presentation above is a fairly common clinical presentation of a treatment-seeking gambler, albeit one that has not come forward entirely by their own initiative. There is enough awareness of her behaviour to make her want to pay lip service to treatment. But nowhere near the amount needed to properly engage in therapy, let alone create.
These therapy cycles tend to be short-lived and result in little to no change. At least at that particular point in time. Until at a later stage when many of these individuals return to therapy. Sadly, at that point often with considerably more damage to their lives and bank accounts. Some of those people might even say things like ‘Why did nobody tell me how addicted I was?’
The many faces & phases of losing control
You will find that losing control is not necessarily something that happens overnight. To help clarify what losing control over gambling means (since it may differ to different people) here is a small list of examples:
Gradually losing control = the more you gamble, the more you lose and the less able you are to stop due to the amount of chasing that you are doing. You lose control by being unable to stop chasing since you continue to chase whether you are winning or losing.
If you are repeatedly returning to gambling as a way of regaining losses you are losing control. Equally, if you believe that gambling can be a smart way of making money that you earn from normal means ‘grow’ through your gambling activities- you are quite likely rationalising gambling in your life. Your gambling has already gone past the point of being an activity that you WANT to pursue and has turned into something you feel you NEED. You may not be compulsively seeking it out constantly, yet when you do gamble it tends to lead to regret.
In-session loss of control paired with an uncontrollable urge to return ‘now and then’ even if it is not frequent: This is probably the condition that is paired with the greatest amount of denial in my client load. As Chrissy in the example above, these are the lot who have often made their addiction into a ‘hobby’, a chosen recreation or at times even a job.Some people in this category also label themselves ‘investors’. I am not saying they are not people who once invested well, but if emotions have gone and are now involved in the person’s ability to keep boundaries, then investments will be going south from hereon. Whilst we can agree there is no constant urging and usually an ability to get on with daily life without major interference of gambling, this is also one of the dangers with this subgroup of gamblers. It creates a perfect cloak of denial under which one can sweep the truth. In reality, there are infrequent but predictable returns to an activity that is still causing the same amount of damage (often in a shorter amount of time) as the type of gambling that features the first category of lost control.
Complete Loss of control is strongly felt and gambling has become recognised as a proper compulsion i.e. an activity that you return to against your own wishes. Subjectively, this is often an extremely painful place to exist- possibly more so than the presentations above. The good new is that this group at least are no longer in denial of the fact that gambling is causing significant destruction and ideally should be stopped. This does not necessarily translate to better treatment outcomes but that often has more to do with the means of achieving such changes and the degree of entrenchment of gambling in the person’s life.
Although, as can be seen, the groups have slightly different presentations it is important to understand that all the different conditions will result in extreme damage unless the gambling is discontinued. The types of gambling activity, the person’s underlying vulnerabilities as well as coping resources can vary greatly - but make no mistakes. Gambling can damage anybody’s life by the time the addiction is allowed to run rampant! It will not discriminate and nobody stands above the law at the point where it gets a proper foothold. It is for this reason I would encourage you to rethink how you relate to the topic of doing something proactive to make it stop.
What happens when you don’t accept that control is lost?
The failure to accept that control is lost is a common obstacle to healthy recovery.
Thinking you are in control leads to heavy resistance to change and an unwillingness to put safety mechanisms in place.
Treating gambling addiction in theory is not that complex in theory, but what makes it extremely complex in reality is the fact that you are dealing with an addiction which by default means;
there is a denial of accountability, internal conflict in terms of willingness to quit and last but not least, a fluctuating denial that permits only the occasional wave of motivation to penetrate through. Other times there is a barrage of rationalisation, well-constructed arguments for why it is not the right time to stop and/or a variety of excuses for why putting external control in place ‘will not work’. The most common reason provided by my gamblers is that ‘I need to be able to do this without that kind of stuff…..
If the person is motivated enough to implement all recommendations around money restrictions, gambling site control and other external safety mechanisms they are already going to be so much closer to achieving long-term recovery. But getting people there is so much easier said than done!!
Unless you see your addiction as an addiction- you will not be treating it in a way that safeguards you from it!
Loss of control and denial are the building blocks of addiction
To be able to overcome an addiction, there therefore needs to be a surrender. For those of you who are not familiar with the term surrender it can be a bit confusing and the word itself often carries negative connotations that make people jolt in the therapy sofa while exclaiming ‘But that means my addiction won’ or ‘but what’s the point if I give up control completely. That would mean I am definitely a loser if I don’t have any control right?!!’
Surrender means that we let go of our resistance to an opponent or authority (Oxford dictionary). In addiction, the idea of making a surrender does mean that you view the addiction as the authority to which you have been abiding to. But doing so paradoxically brings you all the control right back again. Not the control over your gambling I should point out- but the control over your life!!!
If you recognise that the gambling has come to control your existence, you are not helping yourself by persisting to resist interventions that are suggested to make your gambling stop. What you are surrendering to is actually THE REALITY of your situation. AA, GA, NA and all the other fellowships are featuring what they call Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol/gambling/drugs — that our lives had become unmanageable’ By making this admission, you are not losing power. You are accepting that you have evidently not been managing well with your addiction running your life and feel prepared to do whatever it takes to make the behaviour stop. Even if that means implementing a structure of external accountability points.
Not admitting this to yourself will result in a loss of authority over your decision-making paired with low accountability. this is a dangerous combo in relation to the greedy, monstrosity that your addiction has become.
When you accept that you have lost control; suddenly the following becomes clearer and more readily acceptable:
Reality is how reality is showing itself to be. The more I argue with reality - the deeper into my addiction hole will I fall. On the reverse; if I choose to accept reality- I am able to change how I relate to aspects of my reality and make proactive changes in such areas.
Owning the truth about my addiction will set me free: I no longer need to lie to myself, lie to others or be driven by pride to prove to myself that I am a ‘better’ gambler, a more ‘superior’ addicted person or have control over things that I do not have control over. There is no longer anything to live up to and I can spend my energy on proactively working on my recovery rather than allowing my resistance to do this work consume all my energy.
To allow myself to recognise that the addiction controls me and not the other way around may feel like a failure but is a winning step. With this in mind, I can now identify just how much the addiction has been hi-jacking my mind, telling me lies, contributing to relationship discord and all resulting in many negative consequences that I have previously tried to rationalise to myself as originating from other sources.
Not having control over the addiction means that I am more vulnerable. Therefore, it also becomes more natural to accept that I need help and cannot do it all by myself. If I need external help and/or points of accountability in order to succeed in recovery, I will be prepared to accept those in.
By accepting that I have lost control over my addiction, I can also more easily recognise that I will never be able to safely gamble again since there is no way I will ever know the exact reasons WHY I lost that control in the first place (although I can speculate and hypothesise endlessly). The straightforward thing to do is to recognise that I can move beyond this behaviour and find other avenues in life that lead to more true fulfilment and joy. Even if I cannot necessarily see what those are as of yet.
Finally, when I accept that I have lost control over gambling, I give myself full permission to feel all the difficult, shameful and hurtful feelings that will inevitably show up. Although this feels extremely difficult, I now see clearly that the only way through this part of my journey is through it. Whatever obstacles will come, I can conquer them as long as I choose to be on a path of acceptance and surrender.
Feel free to reconstruct these statements to fit better with your language and preference.
For those of you ready for a surrender, I also recommend reading this previous blog post. I have also recently released a workbook/journal that is particularly helpful for someone in early recovery as it can help untwist some of the distorted thinking, give directions and prompts and also act as a guide for better habits and behaviours.
Living in the resistence zone is an emotionally and financially costly venture for people with gambling addiction!
Wishing you all the best in your recovery! With love, Annika X
You can buy the book Here